Thursday, July 07, 2016

Outside of Golden State's signing of Kevin Durant, Marquette's returning NBA players are on the teams that could improve the most based on offseason moves to date. I rank the 30 team's offseasons in a Thursday Breitbart piece.

Click here for a more detailed analysis of the 148 best players by team. Here are the Bulls and Celtics players worth at least four extra wins based on last year's NBA Estimated Wins and the college Value Add basketball rankings

Player

2016

2017

Extra Wins

Robin Lopez

NY

CHI

7.8

Jimmy Butler

CHI

CHI

13.3

Dwyane Wade

MIA

CHI

11.1

Rajon Rondo

SAC

CHI

7.5

Denzel Valentine

Michigan St.

CHI

7.2

Taj Gibson

CHI

CHI

4.0

Isaiah Thomas

BOS

BOS

13.9

Al Horford

ATL

BOS

11.6

Jae Crowder

BOS

BOS

6.1

Jared Sullinger

BOS

BOS

5.9

Ben Bentil

Providence

BOS

5.7

Amir Johnson

BOS

BOS

4.1

Ante Zizic

Croatia

BOS

4.0

Guerschon Yabusele

France

BOS

4.0

Jaylen Brown

California

BOS

4.0

Kelly Olynyk

BOS

BOS

4.0

To walk through the math, Wade was worth an additional 11.1 wins last season, while the acquisition of Robin Lopez (+7.8) and Rajon Rondo (+7.5) and the draft of Denzel Valentine (+7.2) improve the team. Next we subtract -12.7 for the loss of Pau Gasol and the normal -6.0 atrophy for each team – the Bulls project a 15-game improvement.

Whether or not Wade can repeat his level of play at 35 years old, and whether adding a whole bunch of good players to a Celtics team that really just needs one great one is also in question, but the pick up of Al Horford seems to give the Celtics a shot to go to the next level in the East.

As for Detroit, we have Michael Gbinije having a bigger first year impact, with Henry Ellenson the bigger star over his career once he stops twisting his body and hand on his shot.

It has been a great offseason for the former MU players - let's see if it plays out next year.